While it's true that
"local boy makes very good" would be sufficient reason to review any new book by former Montrealer
Steven Pinker, this one - The Blank
Slate - just might make him the single most important figure in all the social sciences. It is already on the New
York Times best-seller list and the subject
of rabid debate in ivory towers, campuses and coffee shops. That said, this book has a lousy title. The
title simply doesn't make sense until
you've read the book, but then, you realize that it's a succinct label for what Pinker sees as an erroneous
approach.

What Pinker refers to
as the blank slate is the popular idea that people start out as blanks, only to be formed by their
environments and experiences. Instead, Pinker argues that
genetically driven innate tendencies
are the strongest forces in determining what kind of people we become. He maintains that over the last
couple of decades, much of the scientific
community has behaved unscientifically in denying that we are formed by our own innate patterns of thinking
and feeling.

Pinker says even
though it's obvious that people are born with certain talents and temperaments, the very idea of
human nature is often seen as dangerous.
"To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorseracism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and
neglect of children and the
disadvantaged."

This book is partly about new discoveries
about human nature, and partly a declaration
of war against "the intellectual establishment (that) has forfeited claims to credibility." The
big mistake members of the establishment
are making, Pinker says, is that they seem unable to prevent themselves from seeing people born as blank
slates on which nurture and culture
have written their personalities.

"The doctrine that the mind is a blank
slate has distorted the study of human beings,
and thus the public and private decisions that are guided by that research, many policies on parenting, for
example, are inspired by research that
finds a correlation between the behaviour of parents and the behaviour of children. Loving parents have confident
children, authoritative parents (neither
too permissive nor too punitive) have well-behaved children, parents who talk to their children have
children with better language skills,
and so on.

"Everyone concludes that to grow the
best children, parents must be loving, authoritative
and talkative, and if children don't turn out well it must be the parents' fault. But the conclusions
depend on the belief that children are
blank slates. Parents, remember, provide their children with genes, not just a home environment. The correlations
between parents and children may be
telling us only that the same genes that make adults loving, authoritative and talkative make their
children self-confident, well-behaved,
and articulate.

"Until the
studies are redone with adopted children (who get ony their environment, not their genes from their
parents), the data are compatible with
the possibility that genes make all the difference, the possibility that parenting makes all the difference, or
anything in between. Yet in almost
every instance, the most extreme position - that parents are everything - is the only one researchers
entertain." This is the sixth book
by Pinker, the one-time Wagar High School student and Dawson College graduate who has since become
a professor in the Department of Brain
and Cognitive Sciences at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. His previous books, including The Language Instinct and
How the Mind Works, have been widely
acclaimed.

Pinker's impressive
reputation, fearlessness and obvious brilliance don't mean that everyone has to agree with him. In
fact, there are some interesting
alternate approaches to evolutionary psychology. But from now on, anyone trying to make a point from a
blank-slate perspective will have a mountain
of evidence to overcome.

This book is a modern
magnum opus. The scholarship alone is mind-boggling, a monument of careful research, meticulous
citation, breadth of input from diverse
fields, great writing and humour. The
blank-slate point of view seems like a huge ocean liner sailing in the wrong direction. But Steven Pinker just might
succeed in altering its course.